Spanish Burger King Ad Denigrates Hindu Goddess Lakshmi

Burger King Spain is really knocking them out of the park these days — first they set off an international incident over their Texican Whopper ads with a tiny luchador wearing a Mexican flag, but that apparently wasn't enough. So some Burger Kings over in Iberia started displaying posters that show the Hindu goddess Lakshmi sitting on top of a meat sandwich with the tagline "La marienda es sagrada" (roughly translated: "A snack that's sacred").

Cute and all, except for the part where Hinduism dictates strict avoidance of the consumption of meat. Hindus everywhere are insulted and upset, and jumping the issue over to our side of the pond, the Hindu American Foundation is called for Burger King to pull the ads and for an apology.

Burger King responded with this statement: "Burger King Corp. values and respects all of its guests as well as the communities we serve. This in-store advertisement was running to support a limited-time only local promotion for three restaurants in Spain and was not intended to offend anyone. Out of respect for the Hindu community, the in-store advertisement has been removed from the restaurants."

What's funny is that they used the exact same sentence, word-for-word, in response to the Mexican-offending ad back in April: "Burger King Corp. values and respects all of its guests as well as the countries and communities we serve..." Maybe they should check their "valuing and respecting" guidelines before launching the next ad, hm?